The fastest way to ruin a date is to confess that you voted for Donald Trump. This instant romance killer has been documented since Trump’s bid for the presidency, with Trump fans whining about how difficult it is to find lasting romance thanks to their horrific, inhumane political views. In some of the most stunning cases, this political divide has even been powerful enough to end marriages.
Being in a relationship with someone whose life view and core beliefs are similar to yours is important — which is exactly what Gayle McCormick had to come to terms with when she decided to separate from her husband of 22 years.
McCormick was a retired prison guard living in California who considered herself a “Democrat leaning toward socialist.” She’d been married to her husband for over two decades and thought she’d gotten to know him like the back of her hand over those years — until one day in 2016 when her husband blurted out during a lunch with friends that he was going to vote for Trump. It stopped her in her tracks, as she described the revelation as a “deal breaker.” McCormick said it was also a wake-up call:
It totally undid me that he could vote for Trump. I felt like I had been fooling myself. It opened up areas between us I had not faced before. I realized how far I had gone in my life to accept things I would have never accepted when I was younger.”
McCormick is far from alone in feeling as though she was “betrayed” by a loved one over the divisive politics in the 2016 election. A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll states that since Trump won the election, this has only gotten worse as the president continues to act out and tear the country apart. The Reuters/Ipsos poll stated that 39 percent of respondents have fought with friends and family over politics, and 16 percent have stopped speaking to a friend or family member over Trump. Even more, 13 percent said they’d ended a relationship with a family member or friend over the election.
While most of us may not be able to relate to McCormick’s exact situation, we all know at least one Trump voter and have likely struggled with the relationship or talking about the election. We imagine that if Trump manages to last until the end of this term, the tension between Trump voters and the rest of America is just going to become stronger.
Featured image via screen capture
